Richard Thorold Grant v. Australian Knitting Mills, Ltd.AIR 1936 PC 34

Case Summary

Full Case Details

The appellant was a fully qualified medical man practising at Adelaide in South Australia.
He brought his action against the respondent, claiming damages on the ground that he had
contracted dermatitis by reason of the improper condition of underwear purchased by him
from the respondents, John Martin & Co., Ltd., and manufactured by the respondents, the
Australian Knitting Mills, Limited; the case was tried by Sir George Murray, Chief Justice of
South Australia, who after a trial lasting for 20 days gave judgment against both respondents
for the appellant for £2,450 and costs. On appeal the High Court of Australia set aside that
judgment by a majority. Evatt, J., dissented, and agreed with the Chief Justice. Of the
majority, the reasoning of Dixon, J., with whom McTiernan, J., concurred, was in effect that
the evidence was not sufficient to make it safe to find for the appellant. Starke, J., who
accepted substantially all the detailed findings of the Chief Justice, differed from him on his
general conclusions of liability based on these findings. The appellant’s claim was that the
disease was caused by the presence in the cuffs or ankle ends of the underpants which he
purchased and wore, of an irritating chemical, viz., free sulphite, the presence of which was
due to negligence in manufacture, and also involved on the part of the respondents, John
Martin & Co., Ltd., a breach of the relevant implied conditions under the Sale of Goods Act.
The underwear, consisting of two pairs of underpants and two singlets, was bought by the
appellant at the shop of the respondents, John Martin & Co., Ltd., who dealt in such goods
and who will be hereafter referred to as the retailers, on 3rd June 1931; the retailers had in
ordinary course at some previous date purchased them with other stock from the respondents,
the Australian Knitting Mills, Ltd., who will be referred to as the manufacturers; the garments
were of that class of the manufacturers’ make known as Golden Fleece. The appellant put on
one suit on the morning of Sunday, 28th June 1931; by the evening of that day he felt itching
on the ankles but no objective symptoms appeared until the next day, when a redness
appeared on each ankle in front over an area of about 2½ inches by 1½ inches. The appellant
treated himself with calomine lotion, but the irritation was such that he scratched the places
till he bled. On Sunday, the 5th July, he changed his underwear and put on the other set
which he had purchased from the retailers; the first set was washed and when the appellant
changed his garments again on the following Sunday he put on the washed set and sent the
others to the wash; he changed again on 12th July. Though his skin trouble was getting worse
he did not attribute it to the underwear, but on the 13th July he consulted a dermatologist, Dr.
Upton, who advised him to discard the underwear, which he did, returning the garments to the
retailers with the intimation that they had given him dermatitis; by that time one set had been
washed twice and the other set once. The appellant’s condition got worse and worse; he was
confined to bed from 21st July for 17 weeks; the rash became generalised and very acute. In
November, he became convalescent and went to New Zealand to recuperate. He returned in
the following February and felt sufficiently recovered to resume his practice, but soon had a
relapse and by March his condition was so serious that he went in April into hospital where he
remained until July. Meantime in April 1932, he commenced this action, which was tried in
and after November of that year. Dr. Upton was his medical attendant throughout and

explained in detail at the trial the course of the illness and the treatment he adopted. Dr. de
Crespigny also attended the appellant from and after 22nd July 1931, and gave evidence at the
trial. The illness was most severe, involving acute suffering and at times Dr. Upton feared
that his patient might die.
LORD WRIGHT, J. – It is impossible here to examine in detail the minute and conflicting
evidence of fact and of expert opinion given at the trial: all that evidence was meticulously
discussed at the hearing of the appeal before the Board. It is only possible to state briefly the
conclusions at which their Lordships after careful consideration have arrived. In the first
place, their Lordships are of opinion that the disease was of external origin. Much of the
medical evidence was directed to supporting or refuting the contention strenuously advanced
on behalf of the respondents that the dermatitis was initially produced and was of the type
described as herpetiformis, which is generally regarded as of internal origin. That contention
may now be taken to have failed: it has been rejected by the Chief Justice at the trial and in
the High Court, by Starke and Evatt, JJ., and, in effect also, by Dixon and McTiernan, JJ. The
evidence as to the symptoms and course of the disease given by the two doctors who attended
the appellant is decisive: dermatitis herpetiformis is an uncommon disease, of a type generally
not so severe as that suffered by the appellant, and presenting in general certain characteristic
features, in particular, bullae or blisters and symmetrical grouping of the inflammatory
features, which were never present in the appellant. Dr. Wigley, a very eminent
dermatologist, who examined the appellant, and as an expert gave evidence in support of the
doctors who actually attended him, expressed his opinion that all dermatitis had no external
origin, but whether he was right in this or not, he was confident that in the appellant’s case the
origin of the disease was external and on all the evidence their Lordships accept this view.
But then it was said that the disease may have been contracted by the appellant from some
external irritant the presence of which argued no imperfection in the garments but which only
did harm because of the appellant’s peculiar susceptibility. Thus the disease might have been
initiated by the mechanical irritation of the wool itself or if it was due to some chemical
ingredient in the garments, that might have been something in itself harmless, either because
of its character or because of the actual quantity in which it was present, so that the mischief
was attributable to the appellant’s own physical defect and not to any defect in the garments;
the respondents, it was said, could not be held responsible for anything in the garments which
would not be harmful in normal use. Two issues were thus involved: one, was the appellant’s
skin normal, and the other, was there in the garments or any part of them a detrimental
quantity of any mischievous chemical? The Chief Justice held that the appellant’s skin was
normal. He had habitually up to the material time worn woolen undergarments without
inconvenience; that he was not sensitive to the mechanical effects of wool seemed to be
proved by an experiment of his doctors who placed a piece of scoured wool on a clear area on
his skin and found that after a sufficient interval no trace of irritation being produced. It was
said that he had suffered from tuberculosis some years before and that the disease had merely
been arrested, not eliminated, and it was then said that tuberculosis made the patient more
susceptible to skin disease, because it weakens the resistance of the skin and lowers the
patient’s vitality. But this contention did not appear to be established. It was admitted that
the appellant’s skin had by reason of his illness become what is denominated “allergic,” that

is, unduly sensitised to the particular irritant from which he had suffered; but that could throw
no light on the original skin condition. A point was made that a skin ordinarily normal might
transiently and unexpectedly show a peculiar sensitivity, but that remained a mere possibility
which was not developed and may be ignored. In the result there does not seem any reason to
differ from the Chief Justice’s finding that the appellant’s skin was normal.
What then caused this terrible outbreak of dermatitis? The place and time of the original
infection would seem to point to the cause being something in the garments, and in particular
to something in the ankle ends of the underpants, because the inflammation began at the front
of the shins where the skin is drawn tight over the bone, and where the cuff of the pants
presses tightly under the socks against the skin, and began about nine or ten hours after the
pants were first put on: the subsequent virulence and extension of the disease may be
explained by the toxins produced by the inflammation getting into the blood stream. But the
coincidence, it was pointed out, was not sufficient proof in itself that the pants were the cause.
The appellant then relied on the fact that it was admitted in the respondents’ Answers to
Interrogatories that the garments when delivered to the retailer by the manufacturers
contained sulphur dioxide, and on the fact that the presence of sulphur dioxide indicated the
presence of free sulphites in the garment. If there were in a garment worn continuously all
day next the skin free sulphites in sufficient quantities, a powerful irritant would be set in
operation. Sweat is being slowly and continuously secreted by the skin, and combines with
the free sulphites to form successively sulphur dioxide, sulphurous acid and sulphuric acid:
sulphuric acid is an irritant which would produce dermatitis in a normal skin if applied in
garments under the conditions existing when the appellant wore the underpants. It is a fair
deduction from the Answers and form the evidence that free sulphites were present in
quantities not to be described as small, but that still left the question whether they were
present in quantities sufficient to account for the disease. It is impossible now and was
impossible at any time after the garments were washed to prove what quantities were present
when the garments were sold. That can only be inferred from various considerations. The
garments were in July 1931 handed back to the retailers and by them sent back to the
manufacturers. In November 1931 Mr. Anderson, of Victoria an analytical chemist, on the
instructions of the manufacturers analysed one half of one of the pants to ascertain what
quantity of water soluble salts they contained and found certain quantities of sulphates but
sulphates would not irritate the skin. In the following May, Mr. Anderson made a further
analysis of the other three garments and of the remaining half of the pair of pants: he was
testing for sulphites, which he expressed in terms of sulphur dioxide percentage by weight. In
one singlet he found a nil return, in the other 0.0070; in the pants he found 0.0082 in one and
0.0201 in the other. There was some debate whether these figures were of free sulphites, or
of sulphites adherent to the wool molecule, and not soluble by sweat. Their Lordships, after
careful consideration and for a variety of reasons do not differ from the conclusion of the
Chief Justice that these results proved the presence of free sulphite. But the results were not
such as to show quantities likely to cause irritation. On the other hand, a very eminent
scientist, Professor Hicks, called by the appellant, gave his opinion that the garments before
washing must have had sulphites in considerably greater quantity: and these tests of Mr.
Anderson were of each garment as a whole, whereas it was clear that the relevant parts in

each pair of pants were the ankle ends since the disease was initiated at that point in each leg.
It is clear that no further light could be thrown by fresh analysis of the actual garments.
Evidence was given on behalf of the manufacturers as to the processes used in the
manufacture of these garments. The webs of wool were put through six different processes: of
these the second, third and fourth, were the most significant for this case. The second was for
shrinking and involved treatment of the web with a solution of calcium hypochloride and
hydrochloric acid. The third process was to remove these chemicals by a solution of
bisulphite of soda, and the fourth process was to neutralise the bisulphite by means of
bicarbonate of soda; the fifth process was for washing and the sixth was a drying and
finishing process. If the fourth process did not neutralise the added bisulphite, free sulphites
would remain, which the subsequent washing might not entirely remove. The manufacturers’
evidence was that the process was properly applied to the wool from which these garments
were made and if properly applied was bound to be effective. The foreman scourer Smith
was not called at the trial, where his absence was made matter of comment, but Ashworth,
one of the scourers, gave evidence and among other things said that they had to be very
careful that there was no excess of one chemical or the other. If there were an excess of some
sort or the other, it would be bound to be somebody’s fault. The washing off was to clear out
as much of the traces of the previous process as possible. But something might go wrong,
someone might be negligent and as a result some bisulphite of soda which had been
introduced might not have been got rid of. The cuffs of the pants were ribbed and were made
of a different web separately treated. The appellant’s advisers had at the trial no independent
information as to the actual process adopted in respect of these garments or even when they
were made and, by petition, they asked for leave to adduce further evidence which would go
to show, as they suggested, that the process deposed to was not adopted by the manufacturers
until after 3rd June 1931. Their Lordships however feel themselves in a position to dispose of
the appeal on the evidence as it stands taking due account of the fact that the manufacturers’
secretary was called and deposed that in the previous six years the manufacturers had treated
by a similar process 4,737,600 of these garments, which they had sold to drapers throughout
Australia and he had no recollection of any complaints, which if made would in ordinary
course have come under his notice. Dr. Hargreaves, an analytical chemist, on the instructions
of the manufacturers analysed specimen garments, subjecting them to tests which would
extract any sulphur adherent to the wool as well as free sulphites, if any were present, and
found only negligible quantities. Against this evidence was that of Professor Hicks who
agitated in unheated water for two minutes a singlet of the manufacturers’ Golden Fleece
make, purchased in November 1932, and found that the aqueous extract contained a
percentage by weight of sulphite of 0.11 which in his opinion was free in the fabric and
readily soluble in cold water. The significance of this experiment seems to be that however
well designed the manufacturers’ proved systems may be to eliminate deleterious substances
it may not invariably work according to plan. Some employee may blunder.
Mr. Greene for the respondents quite rightly emphasised how crucial it would have been
for the appellant’s case to prove by positive evidence that in fact the garments which the
appellant wore, contained an excess of free sulphites. He contended that the appellant’s case
involved arguing in a circle; his argument, he said, was that the garments must have caused

the dermatitis because they contained excess sulphites, and must have caused the disease: but
nought, he said, added to nought still is no more than nought. This, however, does not do
justice either to the process of reasoning by way of probable inference which has to do so
much in human affairs or to the nature of circumstantial evidence in law Courts.
Mathematical, or strict logical demonstration is generally impossible: juries are in practice
told that they must act on such reasonable balance of probabilities as would suffice to
determine a reasonable man to take a decision in the grave affairs of life. Pieces of evidence,
each by itself insufficient, may together constitute a significant whole, and justify by their
combined effect a conclusion. Dixon, J., in the judgment in which he dissented from that of
the Chief Justice, does not seem to suggest that there was no evidence for a decision in the
appellant’s favour but merely that it was not safe so to decide. But the coincidences of time
and place and the absence of any other explanation than the presence of free sulphite in the
garments, point strongly in favour of the appellant’s case: it is admitted as has been said
above that some sulphites were present in the garments, and there is nothing to exclude the
possibility of a quantity sufficient to do the harm. On the whole there does not seem adequate
reason to upset the judgment on the facts of the Chief Justice. No doubt, this case depends in
the last resort (be–inference to be drawn from retailers evidence, though on much of the
circumstances and evidence the trial judge had) by the advantage of seeing and hearing the
witnesses. The plaintiff must prove his case but there is an onus on a defendant who, on
appeal, contends that a judgment should be upset: he has to show that it is wrong. Their
Lordships are not satisfied in this case that the Chief Justice was wrong.
That conclusion means that the disease contracted and the damage suffered by the
appellant were caused by the defective condition of the garments which the retailers sold to
him and which the manufacturers made and put forth for retail and indiscriminate sale. The
Chief Justice gave judgment against both respondents, against the retailers on the contract of
sale and against the manufacturers in tort, on the basis of the decision in the House of Lords
in 1932 AC 562(1). The liability of each respondent depends on a different cause of action,
though it is for the same damage. It is not claimed that the appellant should recover his
damage twice over; no objection is raised on the part of the respondents to the form of the
judgment which was against both respondents for a single amount. So far as concerns the
retailers, Mr. Greene contends that if it were held that the garments contained improper
chemicals and caused the disease, the retailers were liable for breach of implied warranty, or
rather condition under S. 14. South Australia Sale of Goods Act, 1895, which is identical
with S. 14, English Sale of Goods Act, 1893. The section is in the following terms:
“14. Subject to the provisions of this Act, and of any Statute in that behalf, there
is no implied warranty or condition as to the quality or fitness for any particular
purpose of goods supplied under a contract of sale, except as follows:
I. Where the buyer, expressly or by implication, makes known to the seller the
particular purpose for which the goods are required, so as to show that the buyer
relies on the seller’s skill or judgment, and the goods are of a description which it is
in the course of the seller’s business to supply (whether he be the manufacturer or
not), there is an implied condition that the goods shall be reasonably fit for such

purpose: provided that in the case of a contract for the sale of a specified article under
its patent or other trade name, there is no implied condition as to its fitness for any
particular purpose:
II. Where the goods are bought by description who deals in gods of that
description (whether he be manufacturer or not), there is implied condition that the
goods shall be of merchantable quality; provided that if the buyer has examined the
goods, there shall be no implied condition as regards defects which such examination
ought to have revealed;
III. An implied warranty or condition as to quality or fitness for a particular
purpose may be annexed by the usage of trade;
IV. An express warranty or condition does not negative a warranty or condition
implied by this Act unless inconsistent therewith.”
He limited his admission to liability under exception (ii), but their Lordships are of
opinion that liability is made out under both exception (i) and exception (ii) to S. 14, and feel
that they should so state out of deference to the views expressed in the Court below. S. 14
begins by a general enunciation of the old rule of caveat emptor and proceeds to state by way
of exception the two implied conditions by which it has been said the old rule has been
changed to rule of caveat vendor; the change has been rendered necessary by the conditions of
modern commerce and trade. There are numerous cases on the section, but as these were cited
below it is not necessary to detail them again. The first exception, if its terms are satisfied,
entitles the buyer to the benefit of an implied condition that the goods are reasonably fit for
the purpose for which the goods are supplied but only if that purpose is made known to the
seller “so as to show that the buyer relies on the seller’s skill or judgment.” It is clear that the
reliance must be brought home to the mind of the seller, expressly or by implication. The
reliance will seldom be express; it will usually arise by implication from the circumstances;
thus to take a case like that in question of a purpose from a retailer the reliance will be in
general inferred from the fact that a buyer goes to the shop in the confidence that the
tradesman has selected his stock with skill and judgment; the retailer need know nothing
about the process of manufacture; it is immaterial whether he be manufacturer or not; the
main inducement to deal with a good retail shop is the expectation that the tradesman will
have brought the right goods of a good make; the goods sold must be, as they were in case
goods of a description which it is in the course of the seller’s business to supply; there is no
need to specify in terms the particular purpose for which the buyer requires the goods; which
is nonetheless the particular purpose within the meaning of the section because it is the only
purpose for which anyone would ordinarily want the goods. In this case the garments were
naturally intended and only intended to be worn next the skin. The proviso does not apply to
a case like the sale of Golden Fleece make such as is here in question, because Golden Fleece
is rather a patent or trade name within the meaning of the proviso to Excep. (i). With great
deference to Dixon, J. their Lordships think that the requirements of Excep. (i) were complied
with. The conversation at the shop in which the appellant discussed questions of price and of

therefore not concerned with their future history, except in so far as under their contract with
the retailers they might come under some liability: at no time, it might be said, had they any
knowledge of the existence of the appellant: the only peg on which it might be sought to
support a relationship of duty was the fact that the appellant had actually worn the garments,
but he had done so because he had acquired them by a purchase from the retailers, who were
at that time the owners of the goods, by a sale which had vested the property in the retailers
and divested both property and control from the manufacturers. It was said there could be no
legal relationships in the matter save those under the two contracts, between the respective
parties of those contracts, the one between the manufacturers and the retailers and the other
between the retailers and the appellant. These contractual relationships (it might be said)
covered the whole field and excluded any question of tort liability: there was no duty other
than the contractual duties. This argument was based on the contention that the present case
fell outside the decision of the House of Lords in 1932 AC 562 (1). Their Lordships, like the
Judges in the Courts in Australia, will follow that decision, and the only question here can be
what that authority decides and whether this case comes within its principles. In 1932 AC
562 (1) the defendants were manufacturers of ginger beer which they bottled: the pursuer had
been given one of their bottles by a friend who had purchased it from a retailer who in turn
had purchased from the defenders. There was no relationship between pursuer and defenders
except that arising from the fact that she consumed the ginger beer they had made and bottled.
The bottle was opaque so that it was impossible to see that it contained the decomposed
remains of a snail: it was sealed and stoppered so that it could not be tampered with until it
was opened in order to be drunk. The House of Lords held these facts established in law a
duty to take care as between the defenders and the pursuer. Their Lordships think that the
principle of the decision is summed up in the words of Lord Atkin at p. 599:
A manufacturer of products, which he sells in such a form as to show that he
intends them to reach the ultimate consumer in the form in which they left him with
no reasonable possibility of intermediate examination, and with the knowledge that
the absence of reasonable care in the preparation or putting up of the products will
result in an injury to the consumer’s life or property, owes a duty to the consumer to
take that reasonable care.
This statement is in accord with the opinions expressed by Lord Thankerton and Lord
Macmillan, who in principle agreed with Lord Atkin. In order to ascertain whether the
principle applies to the present case, it is necessary to define what the decision involves and
consider the points of distinction relied upon before their Lordships. It is clear that the
decision treats negligence, where there is a duty to take care, as a specific tort in itself, and
not simply as an element in some more complex relationship or in some specialised breach of
duty, and still less as having any dependence on contract. All that is necessary as a step to
establish the tort of actionable negligence is to define the precise relationship from which the
duty to take care is to be deduced. It is however essential in English law that the duty should
be established: the mere fact that a man is injured by another’s act gives in itself no cause of
action: if the act is deliberate, the party injured will have no claim in law even though the
injury is intentional, so long as the other party is merely exercising a legal right: if the act
involves lack of due care, again no case of actionable negligence will arise unless the duty to

be careful exists. In 1932 AC 562, the duty was deduced simply from the facts relied on, viz.,
that the inured party was one of a class for whose use, in the contemplation and intention of
the makers, the article was issued to the world, and the article was used by that party in the
state in which it was prepared and issued without it being changed in any way and without
there being any warning of, or means of detecting, the hidden danger: there was, it is true, no
personal intercourse between the maker and the user; but though the duty is personal, because
it is interpartes, it needs no interchange of words, spoken or written, or signs of offer or
assent; it is thus different in character from any contractual relationship; no question of
consideration between the parties is relevant: for these reasons the use of the word “privity” in
this connexion is apt to mislead because of the suggestion of some overt relationship like that
in contract, and the word “proximity” is open to the same objection; if the term proximity is
to be applied at all, it can only be in the sense that the want of care and the injury are in
essence directly and intimately connected; though there may be intervening transactions of
sale and purchase and intervening handling between these two events, the events are
themselves unaffected by what happened between them; proximity can only properly be used
to exclude any element of remoteness, or of some interfering complication between the want
of care and the injury, and like “privity” may mislead by introducing alien ideas. Equally also
may the word “control” embarrass, though it is conveniently used in the opinions in 1932 AC
562(1) to emphasise the essential factor that the consumer must use the article exactly as it
left the maker, that is in all material features, and use it as it was intended to be used.
In that sense the maker may be said to control the thing until it is used. But that again is
an artificial use, because, in the natural sense of the word, the makers parted with all control
when they sold the article and divested themselves of possession and property. An argument
used in the present case based on the word “control” will be noticed later. It is obvious that
the principles thus laid down involve a duty based on the simple facts detailed above, a duty
quite unaffected by any contracts dealing with the thing, for instance, of sale by maker to
retailer, and again by retailer to consumer or to the consumer’s friend. It may be said that the
duty is difficult to define, because when the act of negligence in manufacture occurs there
was no specific person towards whom the duty could be said to exist: the thing might never be
used: it might be destroyed by accident or it might be scrapped, or in many ways fail to come
into use in the normal way: in other words the duty cannot at the time of manufacture be other
than potential or contingent and only can become vested by the fact of actual use by a
particular person.
One further point may be noted. The principle of (1932) AC 562 can only be applied
where the defect is hidden and unknown to the consumer, otherwise the directness of cause
and effect is absent: the man who consumes or uses a thing which he knows to be noxious
cannot complain in respect of whatever mischief follows because it follows from his own
conscious volition in choosing to incur the risk or certainty of mischance. If the foregoing are
the essential features of (1932) AC 562, they are also to be found, in their Lordships’
judgment, in the present case. The presence of the deleterious chemical in the pants, due to
negligence in manufacture, was a hidden and latent defect, just as much as were the remains
of the snail in the opaque bottle; it could not be detected by any examination that could
reasonably be made. Nothing happened between the making of the garments and their being

worn to change their condition. The garments were made by the manufacturers for the
purpose of being worn exactly as they were worn in fact by the appellant: it was not
contemplated that they should be first washed. It is immaterial that the appellant has a claim
in contract against the retailers, because that is a quite independent cause of action, based on
different considerations, even though the damage may be the same. Equally irrelevant is any
question of liability between the retailers and the manufacturers on the contract of sale
between them. The tort liability is independent of any question of contract.
It was argued, but not perhaps very strongly, that (1932) AC 562 was a case of food or
drink to be consumed internally, whereas the pants here were to be worn externally. No
distinction, however can be logically drawn for this purpose between a noxious think taken
internally and a noxious thing applied externally: the garments were made to be worn next the
skin: indeed Lord Atkin specifically puts as examples of what is covered by the principle he is
enunciating things operating externally, such as “an ointment, a soap, a cleaning fluid or
cleaning powder.” Mr. Greene, however sought to distinguish (1932) AC 562 from the
present on the ground that in the former the makers of the ginger beer had retained “control”
over it in the sense that they had placed it in stoppered and sealed bottles, so that it would not
be tampered with until it was opened to be drunk, whereas the garments in question were
merely put into paper packets, each containing six sets, which in ordinary course would be
taken down by the shopkeeper and opened and the contents handled and disposed of
separately so that they would be exposed to the air. He contended that though there was no
reason to think that the garments when sold to the appellant were in any other condition, least
of all as regards sulphur contents, that when sold to the retailers by the manufacturers, still the
mere possibility and not the fact of their condition having been changed was sufficient to
distinguish (1932) AC 562: there was no “control” because nothing was done by the
manufacturers to exclude the possibility of any tampering while the goods were on their way
to the user. Their Lordships do not accept that contention. The decision in (1932) AC 562
did not depend on the bottle being stoppered and sealed: the essential point in this regard was
that the article should reach the consumer or user subject to the same defect as it had when it
left the manufacturer. That this was true of the garment is in their Lordships’ opinion beyond
question. At most there might in other cases be a greater difficulty of proof of the fact.
Mr. Greene further contended on behalf of the manufacturers that if the decision in (1932)
AC 562 were extended even a hairsbreadth, no line could be drawn and a manufacturer’s
liability would be extended indefinitely. He put as an illustration the case of a foundry which
had cast a rudder to befitted on a liner: he assumed that it was fitted and the steamer sailed the
seas for some years: but the rudder had a latent defect due to faulty and negligent casting and
one day it broke, with the result that the vessel was wrecked, with great loss of life and
damage to property. He argued that if (1932) AC 562 were extended beyond its precise facts,
the maker of the rudder would be held liable for damages of an indefinite amount, after an
indefinite time and to claimants indeterminate until the event. But it is clear that such a state
of things would involve many considerations far removed from the simple facts of this case.
So many contingencies must have intervened between the lack of care on the part of the
makers and the casualty that it may be that the law would apply, as it does in proper cases, not
always according to strict logic, the rule that cause and effect must not be too remote: in any

case the element of directness would obviously be lacking. Lord Atkin deals with that sort of
question in (1932) AC 562, 591, where he quotes the common sense opinion of Mathew, LJ:
It is impossible to accept such a wide proposition, and, indeed, it is difficult to see
how, if it were the law, trade could be carried on.
In their Lordships’ opinion it is enough for them to decide this case on its actual facts.
No doubt many difficult problems will arise before the precise limits of the principle are
defined: many qualifying conditions and many complications of fact may in the future come
before the Courts for decision. It is enough now to say that their Lordships hold the present
case to come within the principle of (1932) AC 562 and they think that the judgment of the
Chief Justice was right and should be restored as against both respondents and that the appeal
should be allowed with costs here and in the Courts below, and that the appellant’s petition
for leave to adduce further evidence should be dismissed without costs. They will humbly so
advise His Majesty.